


dancing with character

by hysteries



Series: kerosene (tim stoker appreciation week) [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Background Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Background Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Background Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Multi, Sorry! It's a wedding and everyone is in love! It's what (most of them) (some of them) deserve!, Wedding Planning, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24066748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hysteries/pseuds/hysteries
Summary: “You’re evil. I can’t believe you want to get married just to spite the boss.”
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Series: kerosene (tim stoker appreciation week) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730320
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49
Collections: Tim Stoker Appreciation Week





	dancing with character

They decide that, when they tell their kids and grandkids about their wedding, they’ll leave Elias Bouchard out of it entirely.

Even though, technically, it’s all thanks to him.

It’s just that he’s totally unbearable. It’s gotten to the point where it’s a six-month rotation now, him and his divorces. And every time, within a few weeks, he’s back to handing out newly-printed invitations for a wedding. Because it has to be a wedding, how dare anyone even think he’d just go to a barrister, and everybody has to drop everything to attend and make Peter Lukas massively uncomfortable.

It’s Sasha’s idea. It’s the evening after wedding number eight and Tim’s wrenched off the hideous maroon bowtie that Elias requested he wear to “match his colleagues.” At least he looked good in purpley red – it washed Martin and Jon out and clashed with Sasha’s hair. But there was no arguing with him. An Elias wedding was an Elias wedding, and his staff just had to sit through them.

“D’you think he could survive not being the center of attention for like, one day? A full twenty-four hours?” She’s on his bed, laying across his lap, and Tim’s got one of her curls around his finger, absentmindedly winding and unwinding it.

“Nope. He couldn’t make it an afternoon.”

“Four hours.”

“Two.”

Sasha laughs – a bubbling, delighted sound that always makes him smile. Then, she pauses, and that should be Tim’s first clue that she’s planning something. That’s what she does. Goes into these big, epic think sessions that end in results like ninety-step plans for how to improve the Institute’s website. 

“We should give it a try.”

“Give what a try?” He tugs her hair gently. “Stealing Bouchard’s spotlight?”

“Yeah, exactly. Let’s have a wedding!”

 _Wedding_.

The word rings loudly in his ears and echoes around his head. Wedding. A wedding. Tim and Sasha and a wedding.

“Hang on – are you proposing to me right now?”

Sasha pushes herself off his lap and shifts until she’s cross-legged in front of him. “Kind of. I guess? Should I get down on one knee?”

It’s not like they haven’t talked about it before. Taking the next step, the big M. They’d both agreed that it was just a slip of paper. Sasha doesn’t think any government interference in their relationship will do any good and frankly, the idea of getting married – God, his mum will flip – has never really appealed to Tim. It feels out-dated and old-fashioned, and permanent in a scary way. Like _till death do us part_. What did that even mean?

Except he’s already planning on being with Sasha until one of them kicks the bucket. They’d talked about that too. They’ll move somewhere with plenty of ruins for her to investigate and hills for him to climb. She’s going to age just like Gertrude Robinson and, when his legs gave out from all the rugby strain, is going to carry him on her back like a rucksack. So really, would getting married really be all that different from everything they’ve already planned?

“Tim?” She’s waving a hand in front of his face. “Hello? It was just a joke! Mostly. No, totally – just, imagine a bigger bride- or groom-zilla than Elias Bouchard.”

“I’m in.”

It’s embarrassing, how fast the words come out once he realizes that yeah, he’d actually quite like to be married to Sasha. He watches as her eyes widen.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. If that’s what you want, I’m all in.”

Her frown shifts into a grin faster within a millisecond. It’s quite impressive.

“I love you!” The force of her arms knocks him over and together, they fall backwards onto the bed.

At some point, after that, with one of Sasha’s curls in his mouth and his shirt gaping open, Tim starts laughing. “You’re evil. I can’t believe you want to get married just to spite the boss.”

Sasha looks up at him, smile spreading into something sinister. He forgets that she can be quite terrifying when she wants to be. “It’s going to be bloody fantastic.”

It goes off without a hitch. Turns out, Sasha comes up with fifty-point plans on the spot and executes them flawlessly. It also turns out, spiting Elias isn’t the only reason she wants to get married.

“You really think this’ll work?”

She’s pouring over the seating chart for the small hall they rented out and doesn’t look up when she answers. “Absolutely. Weddings are total love fests.”

“Yeah, but Jon is like, immune to all forms of human connection.”

“Mm-mm. Not this time.” She pauses to push her glasses up her nose. “And I know for a fact that Martin _loves_ weddings.”

Melanie groans loudly from her perch on a desk. “Isn’t deciding to hold a wedding to set up your coworkers just a little bit immoral? Not to mention, mega cliché.”

For reasons Tim doesn’t quite understand, Melanie being maid of honour means she gets to help with all the planning. Which suits him just fine – his job is the honeymoon. It’ll be a trip to the Caribbean, where he can finally teach Sasha to kayak. To be honest, he’s starting to look forward to that much more than the wedding.

Sasha ignores what she says. “Melanie, you wouldn’t mind sitting next to Georgie Barker, would you?”

Another mystery wedding party member. Tim isn’t sure how Sasha knows Jon’s ex-girlfriend beyond her professional association with Melanie, but somehow, she’s wound up a part of the bridal party alongside Sasha’s college mates. He’s learned it’s better not to ask.

“Oh, please. No offence, but I’m not up for getting roped into another discussion about library classification systems or whatever Jon’s on about this week.”

“Alright then, it’s your job to make sure she feels a part of the team.” Sasha’s got the pen close to her mouth, about to bite down on the bottom when another idea strikes. “Daisy and Basira will be over with Jon and Martin.” She makes another tick on her paper.

“And we’ll be? You have made room for us on our own big day, right?”

“Ha ha,” she comments dryly, finally deigning to look up at Tim. He winks back. “We’ll be over here.” She draws another line with her marker. “With your parents, and Danny, and his date – he’s not bringing that awful Nikola, is he? – and my dad, and Peter, of course.”

“You want Elias at our table?”

“Lord, no.” Sasha smiles sweetly – too sweetly – and he exchanges a look with Melanie. Terrifying. “Unfortunately, there’s only eight seats at a table. It’d be entirely ghastly to add an extra just for Peter’s ex-husband.”

Another office meltdown meant another divorce in the Bouchard-Lukas household, which has made this entire process even more delightful. Elias’ eyes bugged out so far when Tim asked for his weirdo fisherman captain’s address that he was sure they’d never fit back inside of his head.

This one was his idea. He’d heard – or, okay, seen on telly – that loads of ship captains in the fifties were ordained ministers. And Peter was old; maybe not that old, but old. Which meant that he was very likely to be a minister, which meant that he wouldn’t even need certification to officiate Tim and Sasha’s wedding.

Which meant Tim and Sasha were going to be married by Elias’ creepy ex-husband, and all of their coworkers would be in the wedding party, and the boss himself would be relegated to the back of the venue. Sweet, sweet revenge.

“You guys are so _weird_ ,” Melanie moans, but it sounds almost like a compliment.

“I seriously can’t believe him,” Tim grumbles.

Elias waltzes past them, led by Peter Lukas (who was meant to be on their side and firmly anti-Elias, but whatever). His suit is the purest, most blinding shade of white that Tim’s ever seen. It makes Sasha’s Oxfam dress look yellow in comparison, although she doesn’t seem to mind. And frankly, he pretty sure that she looks gorgeous in anything.

“You have to admit. He’s got style. His jacket’s like, down to the floor.” Sasha’s grinning madly, and Tim’s not sure if it’s because they’re married now or because Elias strutting around like he owns the place. “And those are some pretty killer moves.”

“I can’t believe you let him make a toast. Wasn’t the whole point of this to keep him quiet for a day?”

If his arms weren’t around her, Sasha would’ve probably shrugged. “He did last about two hours. It was almost impressive.”

Elias’ wasn’t a horrible speech. Just replete with the cheesy, insincere stuff that’s been repeated in dozens of films – Tim’s pretty sure that Elias never even said him or Sasha’s names. It also ended with him proposing to Peter for what had to be the fiftieth time (at somebody else’s wedding, really?), so Tim isn’t feeling especially generous towards him.

“I’m sorry our plan didn’t go off without a hitch.” She rolls her eyes at the pun. Fair enough: He deserves it.

“Careful, or I’m leaving you for the keytarist.” The woman who sold Melanie her flat happens to be the drummer in the worst wedding band of all time, _Gerry Keay and the Distortion_ , and her weirdo boyband-looking keytar player hasn’t stopped eyeing up Sasha since the reception started.

Tim pouts. “You can’t be cruel on our wedding day! It’s against the rules.”

“I live dangerously.” Just then, she yanks him to the side, and the noise that she makes is part-squeal, part-laugh. “Look!”

He follows her gaze towards the wedding party table, where Melanie’s pressed up against Georgie Barker like they’re one person. Her hand’s definitely inside of Georgie’s tailor-made suit jacket and the tulle of her own black dress blocks out whatever else is going on. God, he can just imagine the frown on Elias’ face when he sees. _This is a wedding, Ms. King, please show some decorum_.

“Mission accomplished,” Sasha whispers. Tim whirls around to look at her.

“I thought we were setting up Jon and Martin!”

“I have many plates in the air. That’s just one.” She’s grinning wildly. “I knew that Melanie liked her! And she wouldn’t fess up forever, kept trying to distract me and redirect – but I knew it.”

“Let’s give them a little privacy, Sash.” He steers her back into the dancing area, nearly avoiding Daisy and Basira. Basira’s all grace, moving comfortably to the music; Daisy follows her lead. Tim waves wildly at them and is promptly ignored. Which, again – fair enough. 

“Okay but speaking of Jon and Martin —” Sasha trails off. Tim gives up entirely on tried to lead the dance and lets her pull him forward again. “Do you think we’ve worked our magic yet?”

She spins Tim out and he takes it like he’s doing a Mission Impossible. He turns sharply to stare at his targets. They’re talking. Civilly. Maybe even nicely. “Jon’s… laughing?” Huh.

“Let me see!” Sasha yanks Tim back towards her. He trips over the edge of her dress and tries not to completely wipe out.

They both wind up at the edge of the crowd, staring at Jon and Martin. For once, Jon isn’t doing all the talking. He actually seems to be listening intently to whatever it is Martin’s saying, nodding and laughing like he’s actually enjoying it.

“Whoa. Since when does Jon listen to anyone?”

She nudges him softly with her elbow. “Don’t be rude, you.”

“It’s not rude if it’s the truth!”

They’re not all over each other like Georgie and Melanie, but there’s definitely something going. Tim can see the smile on Jon’s face across the room, and it warms him right up.

“I think your evil plot is working,” he whispers.

“Me too.” Sasha’s smiling – and okay, fuck it, that’s enough. He pulls her back into him so that she’s pressed against his chest.

“Alright, enough of this.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. “It’s our day-before-the-kayaking-trip, and I’m using my position as official trip-planner to make the rest of the evening about us.”

Sasha laughs. “Is that what we’re calling this?”

“Course. This is just the boring stuff before the main event – two weeks of uninterrupted paddling in the ocean.”

“God, you’re a pain.”

“A pain that you love.”

“Obviously, Stoker. Otherwise I wouldn’t have permanently tied our bank accounts together.”

“You know, for someone who organized an entire event just to get their coworkers to snog, that’s not very romantic.”

“Oh well. I contain multitudes.”

He drops another kiss on her forehead before leading them back to the dance floor. “That you do.” Ahead of them, Peter and Elias glide like they’re on ice, and for one brief second, he forgets to hate them.

For the rest of the night, he tries to copy their moves with Sasha, and it’s a kind of perfect that Tim never knew existed. And he’ll take it to his grave that it’s all because of Elias Bouchard.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so, welcome to my au-verse where everything is fine and they're all just an exceptionally normal bunch of coworkers. i'm giving tim the life he deserves in this one, folks. this au actually started as a melanie-centric fic where she and georgie are enlisted as sasha's bridesmaids and, in true much ado about nothing fashion, sasha uses her evil powers to set them up. i started to write it, got busy and forgot about it, and now here's a different version of it from tim's pov. if there's any interest in me writing that actual au i started from melanie's pov, please let me know! i love her and i love what the girlfriends and not to sound like a broken record, but i love romantic comedy.
> 
> happy day five of tim stoker appreciation week! today's prompt is "kayak" and takes place in an au-verse where the magnus institute is (mostly) an exceptionally normal place to work. shhh, don't think too hard about it.


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